This invention relates to incinerators and more particularly to method and apparatus for continuously incinerating waste material. The invention is particularly adapted, among other possible uses, for incinerating sewage sludge, municipal, industrial or community garbage, trash or refuse, for example.
It will be appreciated that many different types of incinerators have been employed over the years for such use including, for example, the well known Herreshoff type furnace, which is a multiple hearth type furnace having a plurality of vertically spaced hearths. In this type of furnace, the waste material is introduced at the top and moves downwardly in a generally serpentine fashion moving alternately inwardly and outwardly across the hearths and is then discharged at the bottom. While such systems have been reasonably successful, we provide in accordance with our invention, a method and apparatus for treating waste material in a counter-current incinerator, which surprisingly operates in a new and improved manner, as will become apparant as the description proceeds.